Lost Rothwell – More of St George’s Hospital

Back in February earlier this year we ran our first ‘Lost Rothwell’ feature which was focused on the old St George’s Hospital which was closed in 1990 and subsequently demolished to make way for the new St George’s housing estate.

The feature was so popular that some months later we are still getting comments and messages regarding the old hospital and the memories that many people still held.

So with this in mind we decided to indulge our readers further and display some more of the great images that John Holdsworth has kindly allowed us to publish. So lets get started…..

Here we see a great aerial shot of Ward 1 (lower floor) and Ward 2 (upper floor) and in the background the Lodge. If we look past the hospital we can see the land where the garden centre now occupies.

Another aerial shot taken by John Holdsworth from the Hospital’s Tower balcony. Here we see Ward 7 which is the lower floor in the background, ward 8 which is the same building but the upper floor and also the day room which is in the foreground to the bottom left.
Right in the centre of the shot we see the chapel and the building right centre is the Male Nurses Home and some offices.

This shot shows the other side of the hospital, so still in shot in the foreground we have Ward 7 (lower) and Ward 8 (upper) and the building in the background is the Female Nurses home. The Female Nurses home was closed in 1985. The shot also shows the other side of Rothwell in the distance.

Back down on ground level for this shot and this building was the hospital porters lodge and the staff changing rooms.
They don’t make cars like them anymore either do they!

The main dining room with full 1970’s decor and lighting.

A view down a couple of the hospitals corridors. The picture on the left is the link corridor towards the top end of the hospital the picture has been taken facing North from the South end of the corridor.

The picture on the right shows the view taken looking East from Ward 5 corridor entrance towards Ward 7 corridor entrance.

Here’s one for those into cutting edge technology. This is the hospital’s original G.P.O. P.B.M.X switchboard. PBMX stands for Private Branch Manual Exchange. This is a 10 – 50 model and capable of dealing with 10 exchange lines and 50 internal extensions.

It survived from the earliest days of the hospital in the Porter’s Lodge at the main gate until 1985 when it was replaced by a digital B.T. Kinsman Switchboard system that was located in the reception kiosk in the main hospital foyer.

Back outside now and here we see the female nurses home.

Another aerial shot here shows Ward 3 (lower floor) and Ward 4 (upper floor), we can see Wood Lane in the background and in the far distance we can see the open cast mine at Templenewsam.

And to finish off we see the Porters vehicles, the milk float on the right is a Ross Electric Milk Float and was supplied to the hospital in 1982. This vehicle was affectionately known as the “The Yellow Peril”. When St Georges was closed, it was subsequently transferred to Cookridge Hospital and remained in use until 2008. It is now in storage.

We hope you have enjoyed these pictures of St George’s Hospital, please leave a comment in the comments section below if you have any memories of the hospital that you would like to share.

Also… if you have any old pictures of anywhere in LS26 and would like to share them please get in touch and we will happily feature them on the site with any accompanying stories you may have. To get in touch simply click here or email us at ls26local@gmail.com